Stories are good. Everyone
loves a good story. When my twin sons were very
small, they loved a bed time story. After outgrowing
the Three Bears and Red Riding Hood, they still
wanted some tale to be told. I started telling them
the story of a young star fighter named Luke
Skywalker and his arch enemy Darth Vader. For a
year, my sons thought I made that story up. If fact,
one night after a telling of Skywalker destroying
the death star, my son Matt hugged me and said,
“Dad, you are the best story teller ever.” Shhhh!
don’t tell them…they still don’t know.

Regardless, when we talk about
the best story tellers ever, Jesus would certainly
be on that list. He is well remembered for his
sermons, no question. That one about “turn the other
cheek” and “go the extra mile,” for example can
really cause some self examination. But some of his
words that best sticks in your mind are the stories,
The Good Samaritan . . . the Prodigal Son … the Lost
Sheep, and so on. This is probably why Jesus liked
to tell stories.

All of Jesus’ stories address
spiritual issues in a way that (a) isn’t boring, (b)
sticks in your mind, and (c) challenges you to think
for yourself.

Take the Prodigal Son, for
example. The religious leaders were getting deeply
stressed with Jesus for hanging out with the
“spiritually unclean” (such as prostitutes and tax
collectors). Their attitude was: God doesn’t like
them and neither should we.

Jesus explained why he spent
time with them by standing up, clearing his throat,
and begins telling a story: the son abandons his
father, squanders his money, and ends up on the
skids, cleaning out pig pens (and remembers, pigs
were themselves seen as unclean animals). The son
eventually crawls back home when he’s broke and had
nowhere else to go.

Does the father give him a good
smack down and send him packing? No, he is ecstatic
and throws a huge party for him. Meanwhile the older
brother who has stuck by dad religiously all these
years has a big sulk, because his black-sheep
brother doesn’t deserve this special treatment. The
story teller sits down.

Did everyone in his audience get the point? I doubt it. It’s a
wonderful illustration of God’s attitude toward sinners, but it
also challenges listeners to decide what their own attitude should
be toward those still outside the faith.

Through the month of October, we will be in a
series of sermons from Matthew 13. It is a chapter of Jesus
parables, some of his best story telling. As Christians, it is good
for us to walk through these old spiritual tales. They call our
souls and thinking upward. They ask us to reexamine our lives. They
demand a response. If you listen carefully, you can still hear the
voice of the King. The master story teller is still teaching, still
sharing, still reshaping his listeners. We are invited to sit at his
feet and listen once again to the Story Teller.